“They found Ugo’s Vatican passport,” Simon called out, beginning to drift back, “so they phoned me at the nunciature. I had to drive four hundred miles to find him. He was in a city called Urfa.”
Peter, detecting adult conversation, slumped into a corner, staring foggily at the Attila the Hun comic book Simon had brought him from Ankara.
Nogara’s face came alive. “Father Alex, imagine it. I was in a Muslim desert, and your brother, God bless him, arrived at my hospital bed in full cassock, with a basket of dinner and a bottle of Barolo!”
I noticed Simon didn’t smile. “I didn’t realize alcohol was the worst thing for sunstroke. Though someone else did know that.”
“I could not inform him,” Nogara said with a grin, “because after a few glasses of that Barolo, I had passed out.”
Humorlessly, my brother rubbed the rim of his glass. A thought began to gnaw at me. An explanation for what I was seeing. Nogara was a curator, which meant he had a special incentive for befriending Simon. His superior was the director of the museums, who answered to Uncle Lucio. Access to Lucio could explain how Nogara had landed an apartment like this.
“So what were you doing out there in the desert,” I said, “when you have such a beautiful place here? Peter and I would kill for a flat like this.”
The more closely I looked, though, the odder the apartment seemed. The kitchen was nothing but a portable refrigerator, a pair of hot plates, and a jug of bottled water. A clothesline was hung across the room, but I saw no sink or machine to do the wash. It felt improvised, as if he’d just moved in. As if friendship with Simon was paying dividends more quickly than he’d expected.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” Nogara said. “They gave me the space up here because of my exhibit. And my exhibit is the reason I asked your brother to invite you here tonight.”
A buzzer sounded, and he turned to check the food cooking on the hot plates. I glanced at Simon, but he avoided my eyes.
“Now,” Nogara said, and a sly look crept across his face, “allow me to set the stage.” He lifted his wooden spoon like a conductor’s baton. “I want you to imagine the most popular museum exhibit in the world. Last year, that exhibit was a Leonardo show in New York. Seven thousand people visited it on an average day. Seven thousand—a small town, moving through those galleries every twenty-four hours.” Nogara stopped theatrically. “Now, Father, imagine something bigger. Much bigger. Because my exhibit is going to double that.”
“How?”
“By revealing something about the most famous image in the world. An image so famous that it outdraws Leonardo and Michelangelo combined. An image that outdraws entire museums. I’m talking about the image on the Shroud of Turin.”
I was glad Peter couldn’t see my reaction.
“Now, I know what’s going through your mind,” Nogara said. “We carbon-tested the Shroud. The tests revealed it to be a fake.”
I knew it better than he could possibly imagine.
“Yet even now,” Nogara continued, “when we exhibit the Shroud, it attracts millions of pilgrims. At a recent exhibition it drew two million people in eight weeks. Eight weeks. All to see a relic that has allegedly been disproved. Put that in perspective: the Shroud draws five times as many visitors as the most popular museum exhibit in the world. So imagine how many will come once I prove that the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud was wrong.”
I faltered. “Doctor, you’re putting me on.”
“Not at all. My exhibit will show that the Shroud is indeed the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.”